Forum - View topicNo FantAsia this year? Damn...
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4536 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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No FantAsia this year? Damn... this really sucks up my summer! And they were likely going to show Spirited Away (subtitled, since the premiere of the dub won't be until September) and Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door (probably subtitled) this year!
But what I'm really wondering is, whatever happened to the alternate venues for FantAsia, like the ExCentris (where some FantAsia films were screened in 1999) or le Parisien (I don't think any FantAsia films were ever screened there per se, but this is where the FantAsia/Just For Laughs spin-off Comedia film festival was held last year)? Why can't they use those? Or, if the Imperial is really that bad, why can't the Montreal Film Festival (which owns the Imperial) buy or lease the empty Egyptien in the Cours Mount-Royal shopping centre? (The other Cineplex cinemas closed in downtown Montreal over the past few years, the Atwater, Faubourg, and the notorious Centre-Ville, with the tiny, tiny screens, were no great losses, but the Egyptien had some neat artwork on the walls). |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10456 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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I wondered some of the same questions, but I didn't chose to contact them and ask since the news isn't major for Anime fans outside Montreal... |
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LordByronius
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 861 Location: Philippe for America! He is five. |
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It may not be big news to us Yanks, but you damn Canucks got to see stuff like Jin-Roh and Millenium Actress years before any of us ever got to/will get to. That pisses me off. |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4536 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I don't know about that; we did get plenty of people from out-of-town, especially for the big premieres. This would be sort of the equivalent of any major anime convention, save for maybe Anime Expo, being cancelled IMHO. The most likely reason I can think of why they would not hold it at one of the alternate venues would be seating capacity; the Imperial could hold a heck of a lot of people with the balcony. The specific screen at le Parisien where they screened the Comedia films last year was only a medium-sized room. Also, at least one of the rooms was damaged by fire last winter, but I think they've fixed it by now. I don't know about the ExCentris; I've never actually been inside the theatre myself; I was going to see one of the screenings of Tenchi Forever there in 1999, but the first screening was cancelled, and the second was at the Imperial. The room at the Egyptien where they had the press screening for Princess Mononoke in November 1999 was about the same size as the Imperial, sans balcony though. (The regular engagements of Mononoke weren't at the Egyptien but at the Faubourg.) But Cineplex probably removed all of the projectors and speakers when they closed it, though, they could always move the projector and sound speakers from the Imperial there on a temporary basis. |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4536 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I can't think of any major anime films on deck that could have had their international or world premiere at this year's festival, but then again, I hadn't heard anything about Millennium Actress prior to last year's festival. I was really only looking forward to seeing subtitled versions of Spirited Away and Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door (and, possibly, Patlabor WXIII) on the big screen, which is why I'm so pissed. (Montreal's a big enough city so that I can be certain that both Spirited Away and Cowboy Bebop will be shown here, no matter how limited the releases are, but they'll probably just be the dubs, which I still enjoy seeing, but subtitled screenings are double-plus good.) |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
 Posts: 3791 Location: Montreal |
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I don't know how much seating le Parisien has, but the Imperial is a little over 700 seats and ex-Centris is around 200. So you can imagine that ex-Centris was in no way an option to replace the Imperial. |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10456 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Well, I can tell you that our friends at Production IG were going to bring us some nice movies. Too bad. |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4536 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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This story hit geek bigtime: Ain't It Cool News. I fully expected that Scott Green would mention it on AICN Anime on Wednesday, but Moriarty, probably the best writer on the site, did an entire article on it, featuring a letter from Mitch Davis, who is... um, some guy he met up here. But yeah, it confirms that the primary reason they didn't use the alternate venues is because they have only about half the number of seats, so they'd have to do twice the numbers of screenings for each film, to which I'd ask, "Yeah, but if you split shows between the ExCentris and one screen at le Parisien, you'd have more than one screen, so overall you could show the same number of films to the same number of people." What about talking with the AMC Pepsi Forum people about maybe sparing 3 or 4 screens (out of 22), since they don't exactly seem to get capacity crowds at that complex? Maybe AMC would ask for too big of a cut, though. I admit I don't know the logistics, but I trust there must be a real good reason. Still hoping for a last minute miracle... Maybe I'll go to a con somewhere instead.
(By the way, yes I am "Kiyone" on the AICN Talkbacks...) |
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